The aim of the project is to investigate the potential of various polysaccharide hydrogels for use as tissue engineering scaffold materials to enable cells to be cultured both on and within the material.

Periodontitis is a ubiquitous chronic inflammatory disease that destroys the supporting structures of teeth; the most common form is chronic periodontitis which if untreated results in the breakdown of soft tissues and bone, ultimately leading to tooth loss.

Oral diseases are the fourth most expensive diseases to treat globally (WHO, 2005), so developing new therapeutic management strategies to address these unmet needs in our population offers considerable public health benefit as well as potential for new product development.

The overall aim of the project is to investigate the possibility of being able to remove a small biopsy of a patients oral mucosa from a suitable site, expand the numbers of keratinocytes in culture, before seeding these cells onto a suitable delivery system and reimplanting into the patient over their mucosal defect.

This work will focus on gingival recession and the use of smart dental material in order to mitigate it. Gingival recession is prevalent in the adult population with studies suggesting that approximately 50% of the population has one or more recession defects this increases to 88% in over 65 year olds.